“If Shell have the guts to come to the Ijaws’ land, we won’t just kidnap their workers, now they will disappear,” threatened Joseph Evah, coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group, in the wake of a court judgement against oil giant Shell.

The judgement, which Shell has appealed, ordered the company to pay $1,5-billion to the Ijaw community in the Niger region of Nigeria for environmental damage in the region.

The Ijaw took the case to court after Shell snubbed an order in 2000 by the Nigerian Parliament to pay the community, who have been campaigning against the company’s environmentally unfriendly operations in the oil-rich region.

Mail & Guardian